In brief: St. Bernard Hospital to get new CEO after two decades

After 20 years as president and CEO of St. Bernard Hospital, Sister Elizabeth Van Straten is handing the reins in January to Charles Holland Jr., the Englewood hospital's vice-president for planning and development, according to the hospital's website. Mr. Holland, 57, also serves as executive director of the hospital's nonprofit Housing Development Corp. and last year completed a Chicago Archdiocese training program for lay leaders of Catholic hospitals. Sister Elizabeth, 68, has been with the hospital since 1978, when she joined the finance department. A graduate of DePaul University, she is a member of the Montreal- based Religious Hospitallers of St. Joseph.

Merge chats up radiologists

Merge Healthcare Inc. is spending more than $1 million promoting its products at the Radiological Society of North America conference this week in Chicago, according to a report by analyst Ryan Daniels of Chicago-based investment firm William Blair & Co. The annual convention, which drew more than 59,000 people last year, is a key event in the medical imaging and IT industry. Chicago-based Merge, whose chairman is Michael Ferro, lead investor in the parent company of the Chicago Sun-Times, had net sales of $60.4 million in the third quarter. Merge used the event in part to highlight a referral management system intended to improve communication between specialists and imaging centers, according to the report released on Tuesday.

Blue Cross has biggest share of Chicago market: report

Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Illinois has 63 percent of the Chicago-area insurance market, according to the Chicago-based American Medical Association's annual study on competition among insurers, released on Wednesday. Based on 2010 enrollment data, Blue Cross is the market leader in health maintenance organizations and preferred provider organizations, while Minnetonka, Minn.-based UnitedHealth Group is the leader in point-of-service plans, with 59 percent of the market, the reports says. POS plans are hybrids of HMOs and PPOs. The Chicago health insurance market is highly concentrated, based on the Herfindahl-Hirschman Indices, a widely used measure of market competitiveness. The Chicago area has an HHI score of 4,218, two-thirds more than the 2,500 score that marks highly concentrated markets, the report said. Health Insurance Plans, a Washington-based trade group, blasted the report in a statement, calling the data “limited and unreliable.”